New Gear at NAMM 2015

[DavePiatek]

Stop paying supcriptions -> stop opening projects properly.

If (when?) all manufacturers go to the subscription model, this is my biggest fear.

As it stands, if a manufacturer releases a buggy product (or chooses not to fix bugs in favor of releasing new plugins) I'll just not buy into the new plugin. But if I'm a subscriber, I need to pay the subscription just to have my old sessions work properly, regardless of the quality of the new products.

To be clear, I have no problem paying for new features. I just tend to think that if I buy a product with advertised features, I shouldn't have to continue to pay just so that a manufacturer can fix bugs that should have been ironed out before releasing the product.

Plus, the costs will add up. Sure, it seems trivial for a working professional like myself to pay $20/mo. for all the Slate plugs, but combine that with $30/mo. for PT12, and $10-20 per month for every plugin company that makes tools I use and it could easily top out at $300-$400 per month just to RENT the software I use.

A friend of mine works as a designer for a company that subscribes to the Creative Cloud. He called me one day to tell me that Adobe's authorization servers were down, so he was just sitting around the office with nothing to do until they came back. It was several hours. Now that doesn't happen very often, but imagine that you have software from 15 companies, all with their own authorization servers. I don't know about you folks, but I depend on my system to be 100% reliable. Also, I have Time Warner cable at my studio, and once they made me wait a whole week to send someone out when my cable modem wouldn't connect to their internet service. That would have been a whole week with cancelled sessions because I couldn't authorize my plugins.

I realize that this isn't the current situation, but as everyone moves to cloud authorizations, it very well could be, and that's why I'm disturbed by this trend.

 

[Clockwork]

To me and I'm sure others, this is a deal. I dont want to say a big deal because we are discussing plugins. Maybe I misunderstand it completely. For me I do music as a hobby but like to have killer tools that i like. I maybe only mix a few projects a year. Can you not just pay 19.95 for a single month mix the record and not pay again till you need to mix again? If this is the case than it is kind of a shitty deal. Had I or many others known that we would have not invested in the plugins and only "rented" them come mix time.

There are plenty of people who have gone and "trialed" plugs they want come mix time, that mindset is nothing new. For people that only mix a few times a year then it sounds like they could be saving money and Slate has offered a plan to facilitate that. Yeah you can not pay for awhile and pick it up again, I do that with Adobe all the time. Sometimes I need illustrator and so I pay the fee for that month sometimes I don't. I don't know why you think it's a "shitty deal", still seems like your biggest problem is other kids having the same toys without paying the full price of admission. Sorry you bought them before subscriptions were available, it happens.

 

[Studdy]

What about the people who dont have internet in the studio? Remote locations etc. This really does suck all around for people who do/have paid the price to have good plugins. The only people that benefit from this are the people who have yet to spend any money on plugins. Think about it, the way we all have been building/buying a plugin library for the last couple years can now be achieved with no money down just a small rental fee and then cancelled.

 

[Studdy]

I don't know why you think it's a "shitty deal", still seems like your biggest problem is other kids having the same toys without paying the full price of admission. Sorry you bought them before subscriptions were available, it happens.

I have not denied this once, this is exactly my problem. And im sure a lot of others are thinking the same as well. Do you personally own every slate plugin? Because if you do, i dont understand why you defend this idea. If you dont own a bunch of them I see why you are for it.

 

[~BURNY~]

I have not denied this once, this is exactly my problem. And im sure a lot of others are thinking the same as well. Do you personally own every slate plugin? Because if you do, i dont understand why you defend this idea. If you dont own a bunch of them I see why you are for it.

I own all of them and I don't give a flying fuck as long as I'm not forced into the subscription scheme.

 

[Delitzsch]

If I knew that this was going to turn into a Steven Slate hate/defense argument, then I never would have made this thread. Jeez.

 

[Studdy]

I own all of them and I don't give a flying fuck as long as I'm not forced into the subscription scheme.

You wont be forced in but if you want whats coming out from slate next , i read it will be 90% cheaper to subscribe then to purchase everything. Now the cost of the plugs will go up to force you into subscription after you have already bought the meat of the matter. When i figured buying vmr id have the option of cheap modules to buy.

If I knew that this was going to turn into a Steven Slate hate/defense argument, then I never would have made this thread. Jeez.

Sorry it went there, note that i have no hate for slate stuff, i love his plugins and support them. thats why im kinda upset/disappointed i guess. I just didnt like how this played out for current owners of the plugs. end of slate talk wrong thread. sorry.

 

[Matt-Steele]

My opinions...

That mini 6505 sounded horrible. Damn shame.

As for the Slate thing, I've been reading all the comments at Gearslutz as well... When I first heard of Slate switching to a subscription model... I was like seriously? A subscription for plug ins??? You've gotta be kidding me! I'll be honest, I don't want to rent my software. If there comes a time when I can't afford to pay my subscription fee, I'd hate to have my plug ins taken away. So I'll continue to purchase them. But for those individuals who choose to go with a subscription model and if Slate offers it, more power to them. Just remember, Slate is still offering his plugins as fully own able software, so I really don't see any problem. Also, if Slate wants to sell his products for more, that's up to him. You have the choice to buy them or not.

 

[LeSedna]

I suppose, but say I buy 2 Slate plugins in a year, each $200- that's almost two years' worth of subscription fees for Slate instantly. If I buy only one, it's only two months less revenue for them. There's huge amounts of money to be made either way. The only danger I can see is if they start hiking prices on individual plugins, but Slate products are so popular that I see little rationale for that; if they release a product in a given year, most of their users are probably going to buy it, or at least buy one.

The problem I have with it can be easily shown with an analogy with the real estate market :

- if you buy a plugin, you own it
- you can sell it when you are not happy about it
- THIS IS LIKE OWNING A FLAT and selling it. Even at a lower price than you bought it. Still it's yours, and you can sell it
- you can use it as long as you can technically operate it on your computer

- if you subscripe to a plugin, it is not yours
- you are renting the plugin for as long you are paying for
- at the end of the subscription if/when this happen, all, absolutely all, the money you spent in it, is gone, because there is zero re-sale value

Of course in extreme cases, if you bought Ozone 6 after upgrade from v5 v4 v3 v2 v1, there is little resale value compared to the total value you spent in it.

But on most cases, this is a net loss for current customers. IT will have little impact on very big businesses, it will open up the market to low budget, and affect more the mid-class of clients more.

If i have to, i will subscribe, but I am really not happy about the idea. Currently, I am using Adobe CS5 for lower than that price thanks to a deal I was lucky to get.

If this happens, I will make a point of printing 100% of my stems because if Slate goes bankrupt some day, it is not guaranteed we can open the projects in their last state.

EDIT : also, I predict a sudden decrease of resell value for full owned plugins in the early days of the subscription model going live. Could be annoying for someone actually interested in selling them.

I have one hope : that Waves doesn't go the same route.

 

[ForHerDeadEyes]

100% of my stems because if Slate goes bankrupt some day, it is not guaranteed we can open the projects in their last state.

That's something that scares me with many companies where you "rent" software..
I believe Valve has said that if STEAM goes under; they'll release a fix making all your games available offline..

All it takes is for Slate to do a Jason Russel down town, and the company would be screwed.. and so would the customer..

I know you can still just buy things and the license is yours..
I don't think you should hinder progress and things are going to change wether we want it or not.. just think of the last ten years..
I do own SSD 3 with all the expansions, and I was thinking of getting Trigger, but I can't get over the iLok thing..
Yesterday I bought stuff from Toontrack instead..

A subscription thing is great for a lot of people who don't have a lot of money and/or do seasonal work and just needs it a few months of the year..
I'm not really on the fence about it, I don't like the idea, but let's see what happens..

 

[JeffTD]

I don't trust Slate to not price gouge and most of the products released are broken in some way anyhow. I love the results I get from using the plugins but they're not stable and don't make me confident in my sessions.

 

[ArsMemoria]

Seems like a good thing for guys like me who haven't purchased any of Slate's stuff. But, I also hope he sticks with keeping the ability to buy them outright. Time will tell, I guess.

I'm really stoked for the new Focusrite TB interfaces.

Focusrite Clarett Range

 

[MoTang]

Man, the 6505 clip

That 6505 is being ran through a less than optimal cab, recorded through a camera, and is being played with a strat however...I'll reserve my judgement I guess. The 6505+ heads are already pretty cheap so I'd wager that the head is going to sell for probably around $400-500, though probably made in China like the 112 combo.

 

[Mago]

For me it's easy: Since I started using Slate plugins, I didn't pay 240usd a year for their plugins.
So I won't me getting into that.

It could be neat for guys who don't need the plugins every month. But as Dave said, if you work with them all year it doesn't make sense to add all the risks to your environment.
That downtime will end up costing you more than what you "save" with the renting.

And if they don't release a crazy amount of (well working from the start) plugins every year from now on it's pretty costy too.
But I guess it will depend on the prizes for new VMR modules as well.

But I dunno...just way too many risks involved. If at some point your rig isn't supported anymore, but it works well and you want to update, you have to keep paying to use the stuff you already use, but without being able to get the new stuff you are paying for as well.
You'd have to buy the stuff in that case to be able to cancel the subscription, which you could have done in the first place.

 

[Kazrog]

Man, the 6505 clip

That 6505 is being ran through a less than optimal cab, recorded through a camera, and is being played with a strat however...I'll reserve my judgement I guess. The 6505+ heads are already pretty cheap so I'd wager that the head is going to sell for probably around $400-500, though probably made in China like the 112 combo.

Having obsessed over the 5150/6505 line for years now for my music and of course my software, I can honestly say that a huge portion of the tone of the amp is in the power section. Switching to a lower wattage tube power section will change the tone drastically - it's one of the drawbacks with mini amps, although some out there pull it off quite well (very impressed by the Mesa Mark V Mini clips for instance.)

I'd withhold further judgement, in any case, that clip was under far from ideal circumstances.

 

[LeSedna]

I agree on the plugin stability. They are great sonically, they do have something special. But 100% of the times Reaper crashes, it is when I have state plugins running, and lately I have had many problems with VMR. I actually use it in .au now and it is a little bit better, if ever some people are on mac. It seems like .au plugins are usually more stable and it helps with slate plugins.

 

[xphen0m]

I had loads of problems with VST3 Slate plugins in Cubase, but since I switched to VST2 versions it's been cool sailing.

 

[~BURNY~]

Bugera Night train... Err... T50... These guys are shameless...

 

[infectdsniper]

I kinda dig the subscription based slate as long as they keep the option to buy outright. I like the idea of being able to re-try plugins I didnt buy that i already used my demo trial for and maybe use it to add another 30 days even after the trial to solidify if the plug is really worth it.

But on the guitar front, I am totally stoked on the schecter elite banshee. probably going to be picking up the 7 and swap out the pups.

 

[ArsMemoria]

Bugera Night train... Err... T50... These guys are shameless...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkCYFd2TRQg

LOL...holy fuck that's terrible.